It wasn’t the crazy Jackass stunts that killed him, but rather a fiery car crash after a night of drinking with friends. Jackass cast member Ryan Dunn and an unidentified passenger riding in his 2007 Porsche died after the car left the roadway and burst into flames around 3am in West Goshen Township, Penn., police said. Speed may have been a factor. The 34-year-old appeared on MTV shows Jackass and Viva La Bam and the three Jackass big-screen adaptations.
He also was the star of his own MTV show, Homewrecker, and hosted Proving Ground on the G4 cable network. According to a biography posted on his website, Dunn was born in Ohio and moved at age 15 to Pennsylvania, where he met Bam Margera on his first day of high school. Dunn was working as a welder and at a gas station when Johnny Knoxville, a friend of Margera's through the skateboarding circuit, asked the crew to allow their homemade skating stunt videos to be part of the series Jackass, which became a hit on MTV and ran from 2000 to 2002. Click to find out who tweeted, in response to Dunn's death, "Friends don't let jackasses drink and drive." (More Jackass stories.)